Byron York

Dem senator opposes trying terrorists in civilian courts

Virginia Democratic Sen. James Webb has just released a statement disagreeing with the president's decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other terrorists in civilian courts in the United States: I have never disputed the constitutional authority of the President to convene Article III courts in cases of international terrorism. However, I remain very concerned about the wisdom of doing so. Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants, just as certainly as the Japanese pilots who killed thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor. It will be disruptive, costly, and potentially counterproductive to try them as criminals in our civilian...

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Dems' slick fix: $210 billion of fiscal restraint

Something unusual and largely unnoticed happened last week as Democrats pushed the national health care bill through the House. In a complicated, late-night maneuver, on a party-line vote, the House Rules Committee used the health bill to pave the way for a $210 billion increase in Medicare payments to doctors, without any money budgeted to pay for it. Congress then combined that $210 billion with a measure that would force lawmakers to exercise fiscal discipline -- except when it came to the $210 billion. It was a particularly slick move, even by congressional standards. With one vote, committee Democrats managed to propose spending a huge amount of money while also claiming to clamp...

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Public split down the middle on Afghanistan

A new Gallup poll shows a nearly even split in public opinion between Americans who support increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and those who want to decrease the number of troops there. Independents, in particular, are precisely divided. But the two political parties' views are sharply opposed, and if President Obama decides to send 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, he will do so against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Democrats. In the new poll, 35 percent of those surveyed support a proposal to send 40,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, and seven percent support sending a smaller number of troops -- for a total of 42 percent who support an...

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Democratic civil war update: MoveOn raises money to attack Dems who voted against health care

Last week the left-wing activist group MoveOn announced that it had raised $3.6 million to attack any Democratic senator who does not fully support "health care with a public option." Now, MoveOn is raising money to attack the House Democrats who voted against Obama-PelosiCare. "We won a big victory on health care on Saturday when the House of Representatives passed a bill that includes a public health insurance option," writes MoveOn's political team. "But dozens of conservative Democrats sided with Big Insurance to vote against it." MoveOn says it is essential to show those conservative Democrats that "voters will make them pay a political price for...

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Obama: 'No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts'

In his remarks at the Ft. Hood memorial service, President Obama said, "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know -- no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next." Although indirect, it was the president's first suggestion that the accused killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated by religious hatred. Obama also said, "We are a nation of laws whose commitment to justice is so enduring that we would treat a gunman and give him due process, just as...

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The Ft. Hood shooter: More evidence not to jump to conclusions about

From ABC News: U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News. Hasan, accused of murdering 13 and wounding 29 at Ft. Hood, Texas, last Thursday, reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before he began shooting; visited websites associated with Islamist violence; wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings; considered U.S. forces the enemy; opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam; advocated beheading nonbelievers; and told a neighbor shortly before the shootings...

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'I'm going to do good work for God'

The words of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a few hours before authorities say he opened fire on fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, killing 13 and wounding 29. The Washington Post reports Hasan made the statement to a neighbor in his apartment building on the morning of the killings. Hasan reportedly told the woman he was leaving for Afghanistan soon, when in fact he was headed, heavily armed, to Ft. Hood. As a parting gift, he gave her a copy of the Koran. Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before he began shooting, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces the enemy, and opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars...

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Obama turns health care vote into fundraising tool

Scarcely more than an hour after the House narrowly passed the Democrats' health care legislation Saturday night, President Obama sent out a fundraising email asking supporters for money to push a national health care bill through the Senate. "This is a night to celebrate -- but not to rest," Obama writes in a fundraising appeal sent by Organizing for America, the permanent version of his 2008 presidential campaign. "Can you donate $25 or whatever you can afford so we can finish this fight?" Obama says Organizing for America will need lots of cash for the Senate battle. "The final Senate bill hasn't even been released yet, but the insurance companies are...

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Poll: Huge majority doesn't want Democrats' health care bill

With House Democrats racing to pass their 2,000-plus page health care reform bill this weekend, a new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows that an overwhelming majority of those surveyed -- 72 percent -- want Congress either to make major changes, start over from scratch, or simply stop working on health care legislation. Just 26 percent want Congress to pass the current health care proposal as is, or with minor changes. This was the question asked by the CNN/Opinion Research pollsters: As you may know, several health care bills have been passed by committees in the U.S. House and Senate and they can be brought before Congress for debate and a final vote at any time. Which of the following...

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A divided party: Progressives threaten Democratic lawmakers

MoveOn.org is sending out emails today seeking more contributions for its campaign to defeat any Democratic senator who does not fully support Obamacare. Yesterday the left-wing activist group asked members to contribute "to a primary challenge against any Democratic senator who helps Republicans block an up-or-down vote on health care reform." Today, MoveOn reports that it has received $2 million in pledges in less than 24 hours. "It's a clear sign of how angry progressives would be at any Democrat who helps filibuster reform," MoveOn executive director Justin Ruben writes in the new email. "The larger the war chest we can offer a potential challenger, the...

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First Lady: People ask my mom, 'What did you do to create Michelle Obama?'

First Lady Michelle Obama spoke at a mentoring event for girls at the White House today. In her remarks, she told the story of her career as a lawyer and hospital executive. But before that, the First Lady told the girls that they should relate to her, even though she is now living in the White House. "One of the things that my mom always said -- because people ask her all the time, 'What did you do to create Michelle Obama?'" Mrs. Obama told the audience. "And the one thing my mom has always said, and I agree, she said, 'You know, Michelle and Barack aren't new.' She says, 'Michelle and Barack are not unique.' She says, 'There are thousands of Michelle and Barack...

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House GOP health care bill to be filed this week

Although there are dozens of Republican health care reform proposals, the House GOP will unite behind a final health care plan this week. It will come as the "Republican substitute" to the final Democratic health-care bill. That bill, all 1,990 pages of it, was unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week. Tomorrow, or possibly even tonight, Democrats are expected to file their truly final version of the bill, the so-called "manager's amendment." After that, Republicans will file their own bill. Will the GOP proposal be shorter than 1,990 pages? "A lot, lot, lot, lot shorter," says a well-connected House aide of the GOP bill, which is expected to be in the...

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Memo: It's officially safe to criticize Barack Obama

There's a lot of buzz on Capitol Hill about a new health care memo, by strategist/communicator Frank Luntz, which is filled with advice for opponents of the Democrats' reform legislation. The memo analyzes the public's concerns that national health care will result in lower quality care at higher cost, with an out-of-control deficit to boot, and Luntz recommends language to help critics make the case against the legislation more effectively. For example, he suggests opponents would be better off avoiding the phrase public option; calling it the government option is better. The new memo updates a similar analysis Luntz wrote last May. Some of the advice is familiar. But one striking...

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Poll: Conservative Hoffman takes dominant lead in New York 23

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman has pulled into a 17-point lead over Democrat Bill Owens in the congressional race in New York's 23rd District, according to a new survey by Public Policy Polling. That lead is in a three-way contest that includes the newly-withdrawn Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava; in a two-way contest between Hoffman and Owens, Hoffman leads by 16 points. In the three-way race, Public Policy Polling has Hoffman at 51 percent, with Owens at 34 percent and Scozzafava at 13 percent. In the two-way race, Hoffman leads Owens 54-38. Public Policy Polling admits that surveying the race has been somewhat chaotic in the last few days -- days in which the...

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Obama and race relations: hope soars, then plunges

A new Gallup poll suggests that the sense of hopefulness about race relations that soared with the rise of Barack Obama has now plunged back to its pre-Obama level. For more than 40 years, Gallup has asked the question, "Do you think that relations between blacks and whites will always be a problem for the United States, or that a solution will eventually be worked out?" The numbers have trended slowly over the years. In the 1970s and 80s, the number of people who thought race would always be a problem was on the rise. Then in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the trend changed, and those expressing optimism outnumbered the pessimists. Despite the gradual change, there have...

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Obamacare bill: Now 2,000 pages long, give or take a few

Memo to Republicans: You can stop talking about the Democrats' thousand-page health care bill. You can start talking about the Democrats' two-thousand page health care bill. Breaking previous records in the health care sweepstakes, the new House bill introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi this morning is 1,990 pages long. UPDATE 1: The conservative Americans for Tax Reform has released an instant word-count analysis of the bill. According to ATR, the word "tax" appears 87 times in the legislation. "Taxable" appears 62 times, "fee" appears 59 times, and "penalty" appears 113 times. The word "shall" appears 3,424 times. UPDATE 2: Statement...

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Anti-Fox website takes up ACORN cause

With Congress getting ready to pass a continuing resolution that might -- or might not -- extend the ban on federal funds for ACORN, there's a new campaign urging lawmakers to restore federal funding for the community organizing group. The website DeFOX America, which is devoted both to attacking Fox News and defending ACORN, is asking readers to sign a petition urging Congress "to stand up to [Fox's] McCarthyite tactics by voting against any unconstitutional legislation that singles out specific organizations. This includes the continuing resolution that cuts off Federal support to the national anti-poverty group ACORN." I reported yesterday that the congressional defunding...

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For Dems, health care reform more important than war in Afghanistan

Twice as many Democrats say health care reform should be President Obama's top priority as say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be his top concern, according to a new Gallup poll. Gallup asked people this question: "Which of the following should be Barack Obama's top priority as president -- the economy, health care, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy, the federal budget deficit, or something else?" (The choices were rotated so that not every respondent heard them in the same order.) At the top of the list, cited most by Democrats, independents and Republicans, is the economy. But there are significant differences in what comes next. Among independents and...

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Will Congress' defunding of ACORN expire Saturday?

When both houses of Congress voted to defund ACORN several weeks ago, what they actually did was bar lawmakers and federal agencies from giving any money to the community organizing group for the duration of the temporary budget agreement, or continuing resolution, that was in effect at the time. Continuing resolutions are used to extend federal spending, and keep the government running, when Congress can't agree on appropriations bills for the fiscal year. When the congressional defunding of ACORN went into effect on October 1, there was a continuing resolution in place that would last until October 31 -- this Saturday. The ACORN ban was in that resolution, so it will also expire on...

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Obama's big change: He moves America to the Right

As promised, Barack Obama is bringing change to America. He's making it more Republican. It's not that more people are actually becoming Republicans or calling themselves Republicans -- the number of voters who formally identify with the party is at its lowest point in years. But we appear to be in the early stages of a shift in which political independents, people who not too long ago were sick of Republicans, are now leaning toward GOP positions on some key issues. They still call themselves independents, but they're worried by the left-leaning policies of President Obama and the Democratic Congress, especially on the economy. "The middle, which wanted to move away from George...

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Biden's popularity plunges; lower than Cheney's

Vice President Joe Biden's favorable rating has fallen to 42 percent in a new Gallup poll, down from a high of 59 percent just after last year's election. Biden's unfavorable rating in the new poll is 40 percent, up from 29 percent last November. (Eighteen percent of those surveyed say they have no opinion of Biden.) Biden's average favorable rating during his time in office so far is 45 percent -- well below the average 65 percent favorable rating for Vice President Dick Cheney during Cheney's first year in office. Vice President Al Gore's favorable rating during his first year, 55 percent, was also higher than Biden's. (Gallup did not measure vice presidential popularity before...

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Few believe health care will improve if reform passes

In a new Gallup poll, Americans were asked to assume that health care reform passes Congress this year. If so, would the quality of their health care, or their health care costs, or their health care coverage, or the requirements insurance companies impose on them -- would those things get better, stay the same, or get worse? What's striking about the poll is the small number of Americans who believe their situation would improve under a national health care system. Nineteen percent say the quality of their health care will improve. Twenty-two percent say their health care costs will be lower. Twenty percent say their health care coverage will improve. And 25 percent say the...

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Why the White House attack on Fox is backfiring

There seems to be general agreement that the Obama White House's campaign against Fox News is actually directed at other news organizations -- to "get other journalists to think twice before following [Fox's] stories in their own coverage," according to an article in the Politico. Fox is beyond the pale, the White House is telling the press corps: You wouldn't want to have anything to do with that, would you? But the White House campaign appears to be backfiring. A number of mainstream journalists are reacting badly to the attempt to declare a journalistic organization off-limits. Why the negative reaction? Is it because of solidarity among reporters? A reflexive defense...

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Public to Congress: There's no rush on health care

President Obama and Democrats often stress the urgency of passing health care reform now. It just can't wait any longer, they say. But a new Gallup survey shows that the public is in no such rush to remake the health care system. In its latest poll, Gallup asked the following question: "If Congress is going to reform the health care system, should Congress deal with health care reform on a gradual basis over several years, or should Congress try to pass a comprehensive health care reform plan this year?" Fifty-eight percent of those questioned want reform on a gradual basis, versus 38 percent who want it now. Broken down by political party, the results show that Democrats...

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The public still opposes a health care makeover

In recent weeks, we've seen the return of the idea that passage of the Democratic national health care program is inevitable. And indeed, Democrats can point to some signs of progress. But as far as the big picture is concerned, after a wall-to-wall, 24/7 push by the White House and Democratic leaders, the public remains opposed to a health care makeover. Pollster.com's average of polls on the issue shows that 49.6 percent of those surveyed oppose a national health care makeover, versus 43.2 percent who support it. A graph of those results shows the trend lines moving farther apart, not closer. Pollster.com's listing of polls shows 35 different public surveys on health care reform...

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53 House Republicans call on Obama to fire Kevin Jennings

A group of 53 Republican members of the House has sent a letter to the president asking for the removal of Kevin Jennings, the gay activist who now runs the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. "It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity," the lawmakers write. The letter was written by Rep. Steve King, who last week became the first lawmaker to call for Jennings to be fired. Among the signers of the new letter are some prominent members of the House GOP, including Republican Conference chairman Rep. Mike Pence, along with Reps. Paul Ryan, Darrell Issa, John Carter, Patrick McHenry,...

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Poll: Obama personal popularity at new low

A new Gallup poll shows that the number of people who have a favorable impression of Barack Obama has fallen to its lowest point since he became president. Fifty-six percent say they have a favorable impression of Obama, versus 40 percent who say they have an unfavorable impression. (Four percent say they have no opinion.) Historically, a president's personal favorable rating has often been higher than his job approval rating; right now, Gallup has Obama's job approval at 52 percent. In January, just before Obama took office, 78 percent of those surveyed by Gallup had a favorable impression of him, with just 18 percent having an unfavorable impression. By March, the favorable number...

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Obama's not just a Nobel laureate; he's a "brave thinker"

This month the Atlantic is honoring 27 leaders who "embody the Atlantic's tradition of brave thinking." Among those "brave thinkers" chosen by the magazine are Jeff Zucker, the NBC-Universal president, honored for his decision to move Jay Leno from late night to prime time; Morgan Tsvangirai, prime minister of Zimbabwe, honored for standing up to the tyrant Robert Mugabe; and Trey Parker and Matt Stone, honored by the Atlantic for creating "South Park" and recently inking a "groundbreaking $75 million digital deal" with Comedy Central. Joining the group is President Barack Obama, who is honored not for a creating a new atmosphere of...

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New poll: Support for tougher gun laws at lowest point in decades

A new Gallup poll shows that the number of Americans who favor tougher gun control laws has dropped to its lowest point in nearly 20 years. Gallup asked the question, "In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now? Forty-four percent said more strict, 12 percent said less strict, and 43 percent said the laws should be kept as they are now -- making for a 55-44 majority opposed to tougher laws. That 44 percent is the lowest number since Gallup began asking this particular question in 1990. A year ago, in October 2008, 49 percent wanted stricter laws. Four years ago, in October 2005, 57 percent...

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'We may have to save this president from himself on Afghanistan'

Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards, a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, attended the premiere of the anti-war film, "Rethink Afghanistan" in Washington last night. In remarks afterward, Edwards quoted a House colleague, whom she did not identify, saying anti-war Democrats must work to rescue President Obama from his commitment to escalate the war in Afghanistan. "As one of my colleagues, who shall remain unnamed, said, 'Indeed, we may have to save this president from himself on Afghanistan,'" Edwards told the audience. "I take that really seriously." Edwards said she believes Obama is "capable of setting aside this language of a...

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Lawmaker sends letter to Obama: Fire Jennings now

Republican Rep. Steve King is sending a letter to the president today calling for the firing of gay activist Kevin Jennings, head of the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. "The totality of Mr. Jennings' career has been to advocate for public affirmation of homosexuality," King writes. "There is more to safe and drug free shools than can be accomplished from the narrow view of Mr. Jennings who has, for more than 20 years almost exclusively focused on promoting the homosexual agenda." In the letter, King points to a foreword Jennings wrote for a 1999 book entitled Queering Elementary Education, as well as Jennings' work as founder of the Gay,...

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Lawmaker calls on Obama to fire official in gay sex ed controversy

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King is calling on President Obama to fire gay activist Kevin Jennings, the controversial head of the Education Department's Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools. Although Jennings has come under heavy criticism from social conservatives in recent months, King is the first member of Congress to call for his ouster. King says Jennings has no background in anti-drug work, and his experience in education has focused not on the issue of school safety but on introducing the topic of homosexuality into the classroom, including in elementary schools. "The totality of his life has been the promotion of homosexuality, and much of it within education," says...

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Top Obama adviser jokes that the president was born 'in a village in Kenya'

Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, took part in the "DC's Funniest Celebrity" contest last night at a Washington comedy club. Goolsbee won the contest with a routine that mimicked the famous "Mr. Subliminal" skits on "Saturday Night Live" in which Goolsbee said something in his normal voice and then revealed his inner thoughts sotto voce. For example, Goolsbee said that veterans of the Obama campaign "share this bond, and we came here because we knew that the president had a lot of things to do. Number one on the list, we wanted to make sure -- all the Clinton people got their jobs back -- that we were going to...

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Michelle Obama: It's a 'sacrifice' to travel to Europe to pitch for the Olympics. But I'm doing it for the kids.

In her speech in Copenhagen today, First Lady Michelle Obama said her trip to Denmark, along with the travel of her "dear friend" and "chit-chat buddy" Oprah Winfrey, as well as tomorrow's visit by President Obama, is a "sacrifice" on behalf of the children of Chicago and the United States. "As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days," the first lady told a crowd of people involved in the Chicago project, "so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home." "As first lady, as many of you know, I’ve made it a priority to bridge the gap...

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Has the liberal moment come and gone?

A new Gallup poll shows a sharp increase in the number of people who say they want the government to promote "traditional values." Gallup's question was simple: "Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?" In the new poll, taken in the first days of September, 53 percent of respondents say they want the government to promote traditional values, while 42 percent say they do not want the government to favor any particular set of values. Five percent do not have an opinion. The results are a significant change from...

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Gen. McChrystal gets a rare chance to speak with the commander-in-chief

On "60 Minutes" Sunday, General Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, revealed that he had spoken only once with President Obama in the last 70 days, even as the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating and the White House is considering an increase in American troops. Now, it looks like McChrystal will have another chance to speak, although not one-on-one, with the president tomorrow, when McChrystal will be part of the national security team meeting on Afghanistan. (The general will participate by videoconference from Afghanistan.) At today's briefing, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs fended off criticism that Obama should speak more often to his...

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Iran smolders, Afghanistan burns, and Obama heads to...Denmark

With growing pressure for decisions on life-or-death issues in Afghanistan and Iran, this morning the White House announced that President Obama will soon travel to…Copenhagen. Obama will be in Denmark for just a few hours -- he leaves this Thursday and returns Friday -- which is just enough time to make a pitch for Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. He'll be following First Lady Michelle Obama, who is also going to Copenhagen as part of the promote-Chicago team. Here is the White House press release: Today, the White House announced that President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic...

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House Republicans: Investigate ACORN now

Republican Rep. Steve King has sent a letter to Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asking Conyers to conduct "a complete and comprehensive full committee investigation" into the community organizing group ACORN. King and Conyers met Tuesday to discuss the matter and are expected to meet again tomorrow; so far, Conyers has not made a commitment one way or the other. In the letter, King writes that even though ACORN is "operating as a criminal enterprise and committing illegal and fraudulent activity," the group is still eligible to receive $8.5 million in federal grants, in addition to the estimated $53 million it has received since 1994....

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Rahm Emanuel: Health care will pass by Thanksgiving

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says a national health care bill will be passed by both houses of Congress "before the members go home for Thanksgiving." Emanuel also claimed the bill will be "bipartisan" even if every Republican in the House and Senate votes against it. "Health care will be passed before the members go home for Thanksgiving," Emanuel said on the Charlie Rose program last night. "And it will not be just on the Senate finance, because the legislative process is a place where both bodies get to contribute." Rose asked about possible Republican support. "There are going to be bipartisan ideas and policies in this...

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New poll: Democrat lead over GOP is smallest in five years; doubts about Obama continue to grow

The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asked respondents whether they would prefer to see next year's elections result in a Congress controlled by Democrats or a Congress controlled by Republicans. The result: 48 percent say they would prefer Democrats in control, and 45 percent say Republicans. That three-point Democratic lead is down from seven points lead in July and nine points in April. It's also far smaller than the massive 19-point lead Democrats held over Republicans in June 2008. So in less than a year and a half, the Democratic margin has fallen from 19 points to 3. (The last time the Democratic lead was so slim was five years ago, in October 2004. The last time Republicans...

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Hollywood health push: Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde join MoveOn in ad for Obamacare

MoveOn.org has just released a new ad, featuring several top Hollywood stars, which makes a strong plea for the passage of a public option in national health care reform. Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell The ad is in the form of a sarcastic public service appeal on behalf of insurance company executives. "Something terrible is happening," Ferrell says at the beginning. "Health insurance executives are getting a bad rap." Another voice continues: "As the health care debate heats up, we need to remember who the real victims are: health insurance executives. People are saying a lot of mean things about health insurance companies and...

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Walpin scandal update: Grassley blocks nomination, accuses administration of stonewalling

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley has blocked the ambassadorial nomination of Alan Solomont, currently chairman of the board of the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, in retaliation for what Grassley says is the administration's stonewalling of Congress over documents relating to the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Specifically, Grassley has sought, and been denied, information relating to the White House's role in the decision to fire Walpin. Solomont, a major Democratic donor, is chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which includes AmeriCorps. His term ends in October, and President Obama has nominated him to be U.S. ambassador...

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New poll: Majority believe government is doing too much

A new Gallup poll shows that the number of people who believe government has its hand in too many areas of American life has reached its highest point in more than a decade. The question asked by Gallup was, "Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country's problems. Which comes closer to your own view?" Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed say government is doing too much, while 38 percent say it should do more. Five percent are undecided. The number of people who believe government is doing too much is up sharply from early March, when 47...

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Under fire, Democrats abandon ACORN in droves

Back in February, during the Democrats' frenzied rush to pass the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, Republican Sen. David Vitter offered a simple, 28-word amendment: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used directly or indirectly to fund the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." Vitter's amendment was shot down, 51-45, with all the votes coming from the Democratic majority. At about the same time, GOP lawmakers introduced similar measures in the House. Those, too, were defeated by Democratic majorities. Fast-forward to Monday, Sept. 14. A Housing Department appropriations bill was moving through the Senate, and...

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The stunning, total defeat of ACORN

The ACORN vote in the House is stunning news. Just 48 hours after Republican Leader John Boehner introduced the "Defund ACORN Act," the bill -- which most Republicans thought Democrats would do anything to block -- passed by a resounding 345-75 vote. It would never have made it to a vote had not the Democratic leadership decided to allow it, and the winning total included 172 Democrats. Yes, 172 House Democrats voted to totally cut off funding for an organization that has worked for years on behalf of Democrats nationwide. Couple that with the 83-7 Senate vote to cut off housing funds to ACORN -- a number that included 50 Democrats -- and the votes signal the complete...

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Senate Republicans move to extend ACORN funding ban

Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, who sponsored the successful amendment to ban federal housing funds from going to ACORN, has introduced the same amendment banning funds for ACORN in two other appropriations bills: the Interior Department appropriations measure and the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill. Johanns is expected to take to the Senate floor today to argue in favor of banning ACORN from those areas of federal spending. In the new amendments, Johanns is attempting to bar federal funding for ACORN at some departments that currently do not send any money to the organization. The idea is to make sure that federal funds for ACORN, once banned from the Housing...

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Dems push expanded Community Reinvestment Act; deny Act's role in mortgage meltdown; GOP cites ACORN connection

A number of experts believe that aggressive enforcement of the 1970s-era Community Reinvestment Act contributed to the mortgage meltdown, and thus to the greater financial crisis, by requiring financial institutions to lend to unqualified borrowers. Now, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is responding to that situation by proposing to expand the scope and power of the Community Reinvestment Act. This morning House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank held a hearing on H.R. 1479, the "Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009." The bill's purpose is "to close the wealth gap in the United States" by increasing "home...

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Grassley: 'We're being pushed aside'

Sen. Charles Grassley, one of three Republicans negotiating with Democrats on a Senate Finance Committee health care bill, tonight issued a statement saying he and his fellow Republicans have been "pushed aside" by the Democratic leadership in the rush to pass national health care. "We're operating under an artificial deadline set by the Democratic leadership and the White House," Grassley said. "I'm disappointed because it looks like we're being pushed aside by the Democratic leadership so the Senate can move forward on a bill that, up to this point, does not meet the shared goals for affordable, accessible health coverage that we set forth when this process...

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GOP leaders ask IRS to cut all ties with ACORN

Republican Reps. John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Dave Camp have sent a letter to Douglas Shulman, head of the Internal Revenue Service, asking that the IRS "sever all ties" with ACORN. Currently, the IRS has an agreement under which ACORN is part of a program to assist lower-income people in preparing their tax returns. But in light of those undercover video reports depicting ACORN employees in Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York City offering advice on, among other things, hiding income from the IRS, House Republicans are asking that the IRS-ACORN partnership be ended. "It is alarming to think that one of the IRS's largest and rapidly growing partners in a tax...

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Bush 43: Conservative movement is inconsequential

How many times during the last eight years did you hear that George W. Bush was a dangerous right-wing extremist? Probably too many to count. What you heard less often were expressions of the deep reservations some conservatives felt about Bush's governing philosophy. Conservatives greatly admired Bush for his steadfastness in the War on Terror -- to use that outlawed phrase -- and they were delighted by his choices of John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. But when it came to a fundamental conservative principle like fiscal discipline, many conservatives felt the president just wasn't with them. You saw that throughout the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, when...

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Inside the 9/12 protest

Dr. David Dunch had never been to a political demonstration before. Yet on Saturday Dunch, a surgeon who has practiced for 25 years in Youngstown, Ohio, found himself marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, wearing a white medical coat with a small American flag tucked into the breast pocket, explaining what's wrong with President Obama's national health care proposals. "It's a mistake," Dunch says. "It's going to result in ultimate rationing and limiting care to our elderly. We need universal access of patients with pre-existing illnesses. We need to open up the 50 states to all insurance plans. We need tort reform. We don't have to trash the current system....

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GOP leader: Obama 'thumbed his nose at the American people;' speech 'remarkable in its arrogance'

I just got off the phone with Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia congressman who heads the Republican Study Committee. Price called the president's last night address to a joint session of Congress a "classic campaign speech" with little new to offer. "He was clearly trying to bolster his folks to vote for a plan that the American people don't support," Price said. "I think he probably helped his cause. I think it will be temporary. But I think he also thumbed his nose at the American people in not recognizing or even acknowledging their sincere concerns and fears and anger that they articulated over the month of August. It really was remarkable in its arrogance...

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Obama on Joe Wilson: 'We all make mistakes'

At the cabinet meeting today, the president was asked whether he accepted Rep. Joe Wilson's apology for last night's "You lie!" incident. Obama's response: Yes, I do. I'm a big believer that we all make mistakes. He apologized quickly and without equivocation, and I'm appreciative of that. I do think that, as I said last night, we have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big, important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name-calling, without the assumption of the worst in other people's motives. We are all Americans; we all want to do best for our country. We've got different ideas, but for the most part, we have the...

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Obama: I used to say 47 million uninsured. Now, it's 30 million.

In his speech tonight, the president introduced a new number in the health care debate. Remember all those statements from Democrats, including Barack Obama himself, that 47 million Americans are without health insurance? That's no longer the operative number. "There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage," the president said in tonight's speech. But on August 10, at a town hall meeting, Obama referred to the "46, 47 million people without health insurance in our country…" And on July 23, he said, "This is not just about the 47 million Americans who don't have any health insurance at all…" What's the...

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GOP plans quiet demonstration during president's speech

Tonight some House Republicans are planning to attend the president's address to a joint session of Congress carrying copies of GOP health care bills. If the president says, as he has done on many previous occasions, that opponents of Democratic health care proposals have no plans of their own, those Republicans plan to hold up copies of their bills in protest. "If the president decides again that he is going to assert that there is no plan on our side, we're going to show him that's not true," says one GOP aide. Rep. Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee, plans to attend tonight's speech carrying a copy of H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act, which...

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Republican Speaker of S.C. House calls on Gov. Mark Sanford to resign

In a major blow to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's hopes to remain in office, the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives has just released a statement calling for Sanford to resign. "It is with great though and much trepidation that I feel compelled to send you this letter requesting that you resign from the office of Governor of South Carolina," Speaker Bobby Harrell wrote to Sanford today. "The events of the past several weeks have brought to light disturbing facts regarding you and your administration. More importantly, these events and your handling of these events have created an environment that makes it impossible for you to continue to lead...

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On Labor Day, support for unions plunges to all-time low

This Labor Day brings word of a new Gallup poll showing that American public support for labor unions has taken a sharp dive in the last year and is at its lowest point since Gallup began polling in 1936. In response to the question, "Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?" just 48 percent of respondents said they approve, while 45 percent said they disapprove. That's a steep fall from August 2008, when the numbers were 59 percent approve, 31 percent disapprove, and it's the first time approval of unions has ever fallen below 50 percent. Before this year, American support for unions had remained remarkably stable for nearly four decades. In August 2001, in the first...

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Health care reform means more power for the IRS

There's been a lot of discussion about the new and powerful federal agencies that would be created by the passage of a national health care bill. The Health Choices Administration, the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, the Health Insurance Exchange — there are dozens in all. But if the plan envisioned by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats is enacted, the primary federal bureaucracy responsible for implementing and enforcing national health care will be an old and familiar one: the Internal Revenue Service. Under the Democrats' health care proposals, the already powerful — and already feared — IRS would wield even more power and extend its reach even...

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President Obama fiddles while health care burns

President Barack Obama is trading in his only bargaining chip in the health care debate, but there’s no reason to expect that it will change the game. The White House has climbed down in stutter steps from Obama’s support for a new government-run insurance program. It was once the only thing that we knew the president supported. That’s at least one health care myth dispelled, I suppose. Obama was wise to hold on to the public option for as long as he could, though. Dropping the idea makes liberals see red. They know that the fastest way to get to a single-payer, European-style system is to start with a public plan. So does Obama. But the idea never had a chance in...

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Without Bush to bash, Democrats sink

Back in January, there was a lot of talk about the enormous lead that Democrats held over Republicans in party identification. According to Gallup, 52 percent of those surveyed in January identified with or leaned toward the Democratic party, versus 35 percent who identified with or leaned toward the Republicans -- a 17 percentage-point gap. The latest Gallup numbers? Democrats, 45 percent, Republicans 40 percent -- a five point margin. Gallup suggests the change "may be merely a reflection of the difficulties a party has in governing." No doubt. But Gallup also points out that the Democratic rise of 2008-2009 had much more to do with George W. Bush than with anything the...

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Obama adviser: Republicans are a--holes

RealClearPolitics has posted a video of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" adviser (his official title is Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality), appearing at an event in Berkeley, California on February 11, 2009. Jones was asked why Republicans, who when they were in the majority had fewer than 60 votes in the Senate, were able to pass significant legislation while Democrats have had trouble doing the same. "The answer to that is, they're a--holes," answered Jones. The crowd erupted in laughter. "That's a technical, political science term," Jones said. "And Barack Obama...

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Obama approval falls below 50 percent in key demographic groups

Gallup has released its latest breakdown of the president's weekly job approval rating, and for the first time, Barack Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50 percent among some formerly-solid demographic groups. Among men, Obama is now at 47 percent, falling from 53 percent four weeks ago. (Among women, Obama still has a narrow majority of support, at 53 percent, down from 59 percent a month ago.) Among people who have a college degree, Obama is at 47 percent, down from 55 percent four weeks ago. Obama is also at 47 percent among people who have some college, down from 54 percent last month. The only educational group among whom Obama is still doing pretty well is people who have...

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White House: "Our war on terror"

"War on terror" -- the Bush-era phrase that has disappeared at the Obama White House -- appeared again on Monday. When spokesman Robert Gibbs was asked about funding and troop levels for the war in Afghanistan, he said: We are not -- the President, whether it's the economy, health care, or anything, isn't going to -- we're not going to make -- we're not going to see the entire thing turn around in a few months, after years and years of neglect. You can't under-resource the most important part of our war on terror, you can't under-resource that for five or six or seven years -- whether it's under-resourced with troops, whether it's under-resourced with civilian manpower,...

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What happened to the antiwar movement? Cindy Sheehan hits 'hypocrisy' of Left, Democratic allies.

After my column, "For the left, war without Bush is not war at all," appeared Tuesday, I got a note from Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist who was the subject of so much press coverage when she led a protest against the Iraq war outside then-President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas. This is what the note said: I read your column about the "anti-war" movement and I can't believe I am saying this, but I mostly agree with you. The "anti-war" "left" was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the "anti-Republican War" movement. While I agree with you about the hypocrisy of such sites as the DailyKos, I have known...

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If you're married, you don't approve of Obama

Each week Gallup publishes a breakdown of its presidential job approval rating, broken down by demographic groups. Here's the latest one, released yesterday. Among what groups has Barack Obama's approval rating fallen to 50 percent or below? Several. First is among married people, where the president has a 47 percent approval rating. Then there are men, among whom Obama has a 50 percent rating. And people over 65, among whom he has a 48 percent rating. And white people, at 46 percent. If you're a political independent, you don't approve of Obama, either; he's at 46 percent with that group. Same if you go to church weekly; Obama's rating among regular churchgoers is at 45 percent....

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Cindy Sheehan heads to the Vineyard; wants anti-war demonstrators to emulate health-care protesters; will anyone cover the story?

This morning the anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan -- the woman who spent so much time leading well-publicized protests outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas -- announced that she will demonstrate next week at Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama will be vacationing. "There are several things that we wish to accomplish with this protest on Martha's Vineyard," Sheehan said in a statement: First of all, no good social or economic change will come about with the continuation or escalation of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We simply can't afford to continue this tragically expensive foreign policy. Secondly, we as a movement need to continue calling for...

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Grassley, health care and 'quality bonus payments'

Sen. Charles Grassley, who is one of just three Republicans negotiating some sort of health care compromise in the Senate Finance Committee, is drawing fire back home in Iowa for statements expressing concern about the end-of-life provisions that the Finance Committee has now dropped from its version of the bill. Yesterday Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley accused Grassley of "doublespeak" for "continu[ing] to repeat the ridiculous claim that paying doctors to discuss end-of-life care with their patients is somehow 'pulling the plug on grandma,’ yet in 2003 he voted for a bill with a nearly identical provision allowing Medicare to reimburse doctors for end-of-life...

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The netroots agenda: War? What war?

It's not getting much attention, but the Netroots Nation conference (formerly known as YearlyKos, a spinoff from the left-wing website DailyKos) is going on in Pittsburgh this weekend. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg has conducted a straw poll of the participants and found that a majority of those surveyed, 53 percent, say they "cannot support a health care reform bill that does not include a public option." Other results include word that most of the attendees are willing to compromise a bit on environmental legislation, even though it gives a lot of benefits to big corporations, and the finding that, amazingly enough, attendees voice near-unanimous approval, 95...

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GOP thinks the unthinkable: Victory in 2010

It's a possibility many Republicans speak of only in whispers and Democrats are just now beginning to face. After passionate and contentious fights over health care, the environment, and taxes, could Democrats lose big -- really big -- in next year's elections? Ask them about it, and many Democrats will point to the continued personal popularity of Barack Obama. But that's not the story. "I think what's going to happen is Obama's going to be fine, and the Democrats in Congress are going to get their asses kicked in 2010," says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named. "This is following a curve like the Clinton years: take on really controversial things...

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DNC: Palin and others concerned about end-of-life provisions are 'deathers'

The Democratic National Committee has just sent out a couple of press releases using the word "deathers' to refer to Sarah Palin and others concerned about end-of-life provisions in the Democratic health care proposal. One release is headlined, "Birthers, Deathers, and Republicans…Oh my!" and the other, about Palin specifically, is headlined, "Once a deather, always a deather." "Not surprisingly, and despite calling for a more civil debate, Sarah Palin is back to peddling malicious, repeatedly debunked rumors about health insurance reform in an effort meant to scare rather than inform Americans," the DNC says, referring to Palin's new statement...

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Grassley: We've taken end-of-life measures out of Senate health bill

Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, who is working with Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus on a health care compromise, has just issued a statement saying that concerns about end-of-life issues in the House health care bill are entirely legitimate. In addition, Grassley says the Finance Committee has "dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely" because of those fears and also because of concerns that they could be "implemented incorrectly." Grassley's statement: The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies...

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Obama's Post Office health care disaster

With a few hours' reflection, it's become clear that Barack Obama's reference to the U.S. Postal Service at yesterday's health care town hall was the most revealing, and damaging, thing the president has said in the entire health care debate. Explaining why he believes a public option would not crowd out and ultimately eliminate private insurance, Obama said, "My answer is that if the private insurance companies are providing a good bargain, and if the public option has to be self-sustaining…then I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the Post...

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Rove: "Not a shred of evidence" to support Conyers charges

Former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove says House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers' two-and-a-half year investigation of the Bush administration's firing of several U.S. attorneys has "failed to produce a shred of evidence" to support Conyers' accusation that Rove was behind the purge. "There is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever," Rove told me Tuesday. "They failed to produce a shred of evidence for their arguments." In a press release accompanying the release of 5,400 pages of White House emails, documents, and transcripts of interviews with Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, Conyers wrote that, "After all the...

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Obama still won't come clean on single-payer

To add a little more to David's post. Today's town hall meeting in New Hampshire gave Obama a chance to explain clearly his position on a single-payer national health care system. He didn't do it. The opportunity came when a man brought up those old quotes in which Obama said he was a supporter of a single-payer health care system. (The man unfortunately referred to it as "universal," but the president picked up his meaning and addressed the question of single payer.) Here's the exchange: QUESTION: Mr. President, you've been quoted over the years -- when you were a senator and perhaps even before then -- that you were essentially a supporter of a universal plan. I'm...

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Will Obama pay the price for cutting Medicare?

In the health care debate, Barack Obama is getting away with the rhetorical equivalent of murder. To pay for the bulk of his proposed remake of the health care system, the president has a two-part plan. Half the money would come from tax increases, and the other half from reduced spending on Medicare. Obama proposes to come up with improvements in the vast Medicare system that will allow him to extend health care coverage to millions of currently uncovered people, make no cuts in existing Medicare benefits, and save money in the process. "We will find the money through savings and efficiencies within the health care system," Obama said at his July 23 news conference. Unlike a...

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Will Obama pay the price for cutting Medicare?

In the health care debate, Barack Obama is getting away with the rhetorical equivalent of murder. To pay for the bulk of his proposed remake of the health care system, the president has a two-part plan. Half the money would come from tax increases, and the other half from reduced spending on Medicare. Obama proposes to come up with improvements in the vast Medicare system that will allow him to extend health care coverage to millions of currently uncovered people, make no cuts in existing Medicare benefits, and save money in the process. ÒWe will find the money through savings and efficiencies within the health care system,Ó Obama said at his July 23 news conference. Unlike a number...

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Just who do those little states think they are?

Ever since winning control of the House and Senate in 2006, and then adding the White House in 2008, some Democrats have become increasingly unhappy with the longtime traditions and, in some cases, the constitutional structure, of the legislative branch. First they denounced the filibuster. Why should the minority party in the Senate be allowed to gum things up and require more than a simple majority to pass a bill? Some Democrats who thought the filibuster was an invaluable tool of democracy when their party was in the minority would now like to get rid of the practice altogether. Then they became unhappy with the old-bull system. Why should the oldest, most senior lawmakers run...

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Limbaugh responds to David Brooks' "insane" comment

Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that town-hall attendees critical of the Democratic health care makeover were "carrying swastikas and symbols like that" to meetings. The next day, Rush Limbaugh responded at length on his radio program, saying, "I have always bristled when I hear people claim that conservatism gets close to Nazism. It is liberalism that's the closest you can get to Nazism and socialism." On "Meet the Press" this morning, host David Gregory played a brief clip of Limbaugh's monologue -- a sentence in which Limbaugh said, "There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up...

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Geithner on raising taxes: "We're going to do what's necessary"

On ABC this morning, George Stephanopoulos tried to corner Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner into admitting that, given the unsustainably high deficits the Obama administration is facing, taxes will have to go up. Geithner wouldn't say yes, but he couldn't say no, so he resorted to vowing that the administration will "do what's necessary." STEPHANOPOULOS: Former deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman said it is no longer a matter of whether tax revenues should increase but how. Is he right? GEITHNER: George, it is absolutely right and very important for everyone to understand we will not get this economy back on track, recovery will not be strong enough to sustain unless we...

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Probe finds new clues in AmeriCorps IG scandal

After seven weeks of trying, investigators looking into President Barack Obama’s abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin are still unable to answer the most basic question of the whole affair: Why did the president do it? They know the reasons the White House has given: That the 77-year-old Walpin was addled and not up to the job, that he had too many conflicts with the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, that his office had once distributed a parody newsletter that contained an allegedly sexist remark. They know all that. But they also know that AmeriCorps is one of Obama’s favorite federal programs....

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New poll is bad, bad news for Obama, Democrats

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing. The results are found in the answers to the Journal's questions about whether respondents believe the Democratic or Republican party would do a better job of handling a particular issue. In the past, Democrats have usually led in areas like health care and education, while Republicans have led in issues like national security and...

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GOP's teachable moment on the risks of Obamacare

Pick your average member of the House of Representatives, one who has a lot of work to do but hasn't been deeply involved in crafting the massive health care makeover bill. Who knows more about what's in that bill -- Mr. Average Democrat, or Mr. Average Republican? Bet on the Republican. For weeks now, GOP lawmakers have been studying the Democratic health care bill, and for months before that, they studied preliminary Democratic plans. Many rank-and-file Democrats, on the other hand, have been so ill-informed about what their leadership has been doing that it was only last week, when the party offered a five-hour class on the bill's contents, that some members began to grasp the details....

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Obamacare haunted by unkept promises of stimulus

If Barack Obama fails to enact national health care, it will be because he sowed the seeds of his own demise last Feb. 17 -- the day the president, surrounded by Democratic leaders, signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill....

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White House backs off "stupidly" accusation in Gates affair

On board Air Force One today, as the president headed for a health-care event in Cleveland, spokesman Robert Gibbs tried to pull back from the president's declaration, at his news conference last night, that Cambridge, Massachusetts police "acted stupidly" in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Reporters wanted to know why the president, who admitted that he didn't know all the facts of the matter, would so decisively declare that one side had acted "stupidly." From today's questioning: QUESTION: Robert, some people thought it was a little unusual that the President waded into the matter between Professor Gates and the Cambridge police -- a little...

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Voters scared of Obama’s rushed ‘experiments’

With one word Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele helped the GOP get back in the fight over health care and the entire Obama agenda. The word was “experiment.” “Candidate Obama promised change,” Steele said in a speech at the National Press Club. “President Obama is conducting an experiment.” Steele went on to accuse Barack Obama of carrying out dangerous experiments with the nation’s health care, with the economy, with taxpayers’ dollars. “Experiment” didn’t come from nowhere. “The term bubbled up from a set of focus groups we did with swing voters, independents, soft Republicans and soft...

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Why the GOP failed the Sotomayor test

For Republicans, the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor were a missed opportunity. Not an opportunity to defeat her — with 60 Senate Democrats determined to confirm President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court choice, Sotomayor will undoubtedly prevail. But Republicans had a chance to delve deeply into Sotomayor’s record, to reveal the worldview and background of the next Supreme Court justice, and they didn’t take advantage of it. Part of that was because of Sotomayor herself. She carefully followed her coaching, answered slowly, avoided questions by putting them “in context” and refused to budge from scripted responses on...

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Will Republicans expose the two Sotomayors?

Sonia Sotomayor's opening statement at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing was, to many ears, brief and boilerplate. But to Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans listening intently just a few feet away, Sotomayor drew a map for the questioning they hope will expose the fundamental flaws in her judicial views. The theme Republicans will stress is this: Which is the real Sonia Sotomayor? The one testifying before the committee or the one who's been giving speeches and writing legal opinions for nearly two decades? "If you look at her opening statement, there are places where she is attempting, on the eve of her confirmation, to do a 180 on things she has said over the...

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What the Republicans will ask Sonia Sotomayor

There's been a lot of discussion about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's views on affirmative action, quotas, and the role of federal judges. But with confirmation hearings set to begin Monday morning, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are becoming increasingly concerned about Sotomayor's positions on gun rights. At issue is Sotomayor's opinion in a recent Second Amendment case in New York. Sotomayor held that even though the Supreme Court has ruled the federal government cannot deny the right to bear arms, state governments are still entitled to do so -- in other words, that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. "This is a huge issue, one of...

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The Republican governors' dilemma

GEORGETOWN COUNTY, S.C. - At the Fourth of July parade here, one float after another was a joke about Gov. Mark Sanford. There was a man in a wig and a sequined dress wailing, "I'm looking for my soul mate!" A sign on his truck asked, "Wanna dance?" A sport utility vehicle rolled by, decorated with a map of Sanford's world -- 169 miles from here to Columbia, the state capital, and 4,935 miles to Buenos Aires. Another float urged people to visit SoulMate.gov, which, it turns out, is an amusing joke but not a real Web site. Meanwhile, a few miles up Highway 17, Katon Dawson, until recently head of the South Carolina Republican Party, was conducting an informal poll...

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Battle lines drawn in AmeriCorps IG scandal

Key Republicans in both the House and the Senate are accusing the White House of giving “incomplete and misleading” information to investigators probing the president’s abrupt firing of AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. In return, the White House is hinting that documents concerning its actions in the Walpin affair may be protected by executive privilege.

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Democrats play word games on immigration

On June 24, Sen. Charles Schumer gave a remarkable speech on immigration. Preparing the way for the Obama administration's expected push for comprehensive reform, Schumer seemed to adopt a newer, tougher-sounding tone as he promised that a bill would be passed during "this Congress." "People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens, and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who entered the United States legally," Schumer said. "Illegal immigration is wrong -- plain and simple," he continued. "When we use phrases like 'undocumented workers,' we convey a message to the American people that their government...

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Serious questions remain for Mark Sanford

A few days ago, when South Carolina governor Mark Sanford was missing in action and thought to be hiking the Appalachian Trail, I emailed a well-connected political type in the state to ask what was going on. "All sorts of rumors are flying, from a Susan Boyle sort of meltdown to domestic issues," came the response. "Mostly the latter, or maybe a combination. Much talk of a girlfriend in the mix." Sanford's news conference Wednesday afternoon proved the rumors right. But even after the governor's revealing and unscripted confession, several important questions remain. The most serious is whether Sanford’s frame of mind will allow him to carry out his duties...

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Getting to the bottom of the AmeriCorps IG firing

The board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees the AmeriCorps program, is made up of Democrats and Republicans, no matter who is in the White House. Having members from both parties is a congressionally mandated requirement for the national service agency.

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Worried about Sotomayor? Consider Andre Davis

We've heard a lot about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. But you probably haven't heard of Andre Davis. Yet Davis, as much as Sotomayor, is a telling indicator of the direction in which President Obama seeks to steer the federal judiciary.

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Republicans cite troubling gaps in Sotomayor's questionnaire

Senate Republicans involved in the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination say there are significant gaps in the 172-page questionnaire Sotomayor sent recently to the Senate Judiciary...

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Digging in for Obama’s health-care offensive

It's hard to tell whether this meeting, at a La Madeleine restaurant in a sprawling shopping-center complex just outside Washington, is the start of a historic movement or just a strangely wonkish group-therapy session. About 20 people from Northern Virginia have come to this faux-rustic French café on a Saturday morning to discuss health care reform. That alone makes them unusual; after all, there are a lot of other things one could be doing to begin the weekend. But they have answered the call from Organizing for America (OFA), which is basically the 2008 Obama campaign operating under a new name. "This is the political issue I care about most, apart from the war,"...

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The Vindication of Jeff Sessions

Few politicians — few people, really — get to do what Jeff Sessions has done. Back in 1986, when he was a rising star in his home state of Alabama, Sessions was nominated for a seat on the federal courts. A conservative Republican, Sessions was attacked by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Patrick Leahy, and other powerful Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who accused him of racial insensitivity and argued he was not qualified for the bench. They voted down the nomination and sent Sessions home to Alabama in defeat. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Ten years later, after serving as attorney general of his state, Sessions ran for the Senate and won. Returning to...

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Why did George H.W. Bush pick Sotomayor for the courts?

In his announcement of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nominee, President Barack Obama emphasized that she was first placed on the federal bench by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush. “It’s a measure of her qualities and her qualifications that Judge Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, and promoted to the Federal Court of Appeals by a Democrat, Bill Clinton,” the president said. Why did the first President Bush nominate Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York? Veterans of the first Bush administration say the answer is politics, with a generous helping...

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The anonymous accuser of Guantanamo

Have you heard of Matthew Alexander? Unless you follow the debate over terrorist suspects and "enhanced interrogation techniques" very closely, the answer is probably no. Yet Alexander is one of the most influential voices in the deliberations over what to do with the U.S. terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "Major Matthew Alexander, who has actually interrogated al Qaeda suspects in Iraq, attributes half of the deaths of Americans in Iraq to the detention abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo," Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said on "Meet the Press" Sunday. "Continuing Guantanamo, unfortunately, makes our troops less safe." A...

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How the GOP beat Obama on Guantanamo

It took a while for people to notice, but in the last few months, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made 16 -- yes, 16 -- speeches on the Senate floor questioning the wisdom of Barack Obama's decision to close the U.S. terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. McConnell started January 22, the day the president issued an executive order declaring that Gitmo will be closed within a year. McConnell is still going. "Sometimes it takes a little bit of repetition for people to get the story," one Republican Senate aide says. "People weren't asking these questions back in January." Now they are. For the moment at least, Obama has lost the Battle of...

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Why Republicans will defeat Obama on health care

Barack Obama is making an enormous mistake on the most important initiative of his presidency.

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Biden's rosy report can't hide stimulus problems

This week, the White House released its first quarterly report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the $787 billion stimulus bill. Reaction on Capitol Hill was swift: Republicans think it's a joke, while Democrats don't want to talk about it. The report was unveiled not by President Obama but by Vice President Joe Biden, who said it "shows early progress providing immediate financial relief for American families and jump-starting billions of dollars in job-creating projects." In a press release, Biden claimed the stimulus has so far "created or saved" 150,000 jobs, and that "over 3,000 transportation construction projects have been...

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Obama’s dangerous budget leaves GOP at loss for words

Republican strategists have a problem. The scale of what President Barack Obama proposes to do to the American economy is so enormous, so far-reaching and so potentially disastrous that the opposition party is having a hard time describing it. “How do you translate the numbers into something that people can grasp to represent the broader problem?” a Republican pollster asked in a recent conversation. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders would love to hear an answer, but the pollster didn’t have one. GOP message mavens are struggling with something that academics call “insensitivity to scope.” It affects us all; we can understand something on...

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Dems attack before Supreme Court fight begins

Whoever Barack Obama chooses for the Supreme Court, the president will start with the huge advantage of a 59-40 Democratic majority in the Senate. (It'll be 60-40 if Al Franken is ultimately named the winner in Minnesota.) But there's another ratio that will also be critical in the coming confirmation battle: 12-7. That's the number of Democrats to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The figure became so lopsided when Sen. Arlen Specter switched parties. Majority Democrats did not allow Republicans to replace Specter, turning a committee with 11 Democrats and eight Republicans into a 12-7 panel. The Judiciary Committee has not been that unevenly divided in decades. The...

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Reagan’s real legacy is the man himself

Santa Barbara, California -- You drive up a steep, rough and winding road to reach Ronald Reagan's ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains. For eight years, from 1981 to 1989, this place north of Santa Barbara was the Western White House; Reagan spent nearly a year of his time in office here. Now, what he called Rancho del Cielo is pretty much deserted. But the ranch, tended by a lone caretaker, is still much like it was when Reagan was alive. It's not open to the public; these days, the old adobe house and 688 surrounding acres are owned and carefully maintained by the conservative Young America's Foundation. The group doesn't have the staff or resources to conduct public tours, but they...

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Senator Specter, meet your new friends

What does the future hold for Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter? A lot of uncertainty, soured relationships, and possible disaster. And that's just with his new-found friends in the Democratic Party. There's no doubt Senate Democrats wanted Specter's help with the president's agenda this year. His vote in the Democratic column could mean significantly better chances for the Obama administration's proposals on health care, energy, and education. So Specter's support will be valuable to his new party in the short run. The long run is another matter. Go behind the news conferences and photo-ops, and Specter's fellow Democrats aren't exactly welcoming him with open arms and warm...

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When will high-flying Obama fall to Earth?

"His personal can't bring up his policies, but his policies can bring down his personal." That, in the shorthand of Washington insiders -- it's from a top Republican aide in the Senate -- is the secret to understanding Barack Obama's presidency in the months ahead, at least as GOP strategists see it. What it means is this: After 100 days in the White House, Barack Obama's personal approval rating remains high. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, he clocked in at 69 percent job approval rating, with 26 percent disapproval. But at the same time, the public's opinion of Obama's handling of key issues is significantly lower than his personal approval. For example, in the...

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Ted Olson: “Torture” probes will never end

Perhaps more than anyone in Washington today, Theodore Olson knows the dangers of the path the Obama administration is traveling on the question of Bush-era terrorist interrogations. It's not just that Olson is one of the nation's top lawyers and a former high-ranking Justice Department official. It's not even that his wife Barbara was among those killed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. The thing that makes Olson's perspective so valuable is that his life includes not only those experiences but also a keen perspective on the way Washington investigations can run amok. In the 1980s, Olson was the subject of controversy over advice he had given, as the head of the Justice Department's...

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In time of victory, why is the left so angry?

These should be happy times for liberals and the Democratic party as a whole. They control the White House and both houses of Congress, while opposition Republicans are leaderless and lost. So why do some Democrats, particularly those farther to the left, appear so angry? If you doubt it, just watch a few minutes of MSNBC, where the recent nationwide series of "tea parties" to protest federal spending and taxes set off an angry, almost manic response. The most telling came on Keith Olbermann's program, during which the actress Janeane Garofalo, who plays an FBI computer geek on “24,” denounced the tea parties as "racism straight up." "Let's be very...

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Who's Laughing at the ‘Axis of Evil’ today?

There are undoubtedly people who have a more vivid memory of Will Farrell’s "Saturday Night Live" version of the "Axis of Evil" — the one in which Farrell, as President George W. Bush, denounced Iran, Iraq and "one of those Koreas" — than of the real thing from Bush's 2002 State of the Union address. A lot of comedians made a lot of fun of the "Axis of Evil" concept. But now, more than seven years later, it's looking pretty solid. This is what Bush said on the subject of Iran, Iraq and North Korea: States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking...

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